


The Only Permanent Tenderness

by heartstone



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Confessions, Dialogue Heavy, Discussion of Past Depression, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Open Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22759222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: Tears twinkled along the corners of grey eyes, but the sound that came from Celebrimbor’s lips was of laughter, bright and clear and achingly exhilarated, as in a confession long in the making, as if in a hope for something nearly attainable, something unimaginably filled with joy.***Tyelpë proposes to Annatar.
Relationships: Annatar/Celebrimbor | Telperinquar, Celebrimbor | Telperinquar/Sauron | Mairon
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	The Only Permanent Tenderness

IX.

(Poem by Pablo Neruda)

***

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks

the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,

and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,

to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,

magnetic transient whose death blooms

and vanishes— being, nothingness— forever:

broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You and I, Love, together we ratify the silence,

while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,

collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,

galloping water, incessant sand,

we make the only permanent tenderness.

***

The sun that morning floated gently to the embrace of of the pale blue sky, spilling its amber light from between the shoulders of the mountains and bathing the world in the warmth of Tuilë. Pine-fragrant mist arose from the white-capped peaks and curled down along the green knolls, adorning the newborn leaves with quivering crystal and settling in the shallow vales like a river made entirely of cirriform sea-foam. One hillock rose like an island from the mists as if to greet the soaring sun with a crown of silver birch set with the newly budding leaf-gems of peridot and yellow quartz.

A set of stairs tufted with the fast-growing grasses curved from the cloudy current, and two figures rose from the misty vale: one which guided the other, as tall and slender as the birch, and the other who glided up the steps with a grace matching only the sun as it drew to its zenith. The morning haze broke, and the two stood wading in a sea of nodding bluebells that waved softly against the silver trunks, a grand pool of blue-violet that shone like clear light through the deepest facet of sapphire. The flowers curled on their racemes, trembling sweetly like little bells and breathing their perfume to the air from the lips of their curled petals. In twain they continued, the flowers brushing against their robes as if to impart the vibrancy of their colour or their floral ambrosia on the folds of silk.

At the bourn there was a bench which arose from the flower-sea, and its legs were wreathed about with ivy as if that vine upheld it from the tall inflorescences. There they sat with the light streaming down upon them from the blooming canopy in vibrant beams. Before them the hillock folded back downwards to where the mists collected and the bluebells were merged with the haze like a paint-stroke of vibrant dawn-purple mixing with morning argent. To each side of the hill the rippling ribbons of the Sirannon and Glanduin ran twinkling, cradling the peaks of the loftiest belfry of Ost-in-Edhil between their pale arms as the lower towers dipped behind the green mounds that lay between the birch grove and the fair city.

For many moments the pair sat in the silence of the rising sun and the warmth which sent the mists fading in the air and the scents to pour from the bluebells to deepen their notes of spring. A nervousness fluttered over Celebrimbor, a nervousness that dissipated with the fall of his companion’s curls over his shoulder as he rested his cheek there in its accustomed hollow. His words were soft when he finally spoke, as if the sweetness of the dawn had tempered his voice with its thousand sighs.

“You know that you have saved me?” Celebrimbor murmured into his hair, resting his face delicately there, submerged within the Maia's ineffable scent and that of the growth of green things.

“Saved you?” His reply was just as gentle, and the bluebells trembled as in a crowd that hushes itself.

An ache sprouted in Celebrimbor’s chest, one which he knew was always present like a seed dormant in the earth and waiting for the caress of Tuilë to notice its slumber, to wake it from stillness.

“I think. . . I think I was fading away, before you arrived. I think that if you had waited any longer, there would have been nothing left of me.”

A small zephyr blew, tickling the flowers which curled around their feet. The current was encouraging and the bluebells urged him on with their myriad invisible voices. The sturdy hands of Celebrimbor quivered, and he pressed a kiss to the copper curls of his Fairest as he leaned into the enveloping embrace.

“It felt as if a part of my soul was left behind each moment that I lived on, like I was losing a part of myself to each of my memories. Something within me has never left Aman, or Beleriand, or the company of Atar. . . it is something I can never get back but which stays, perhaps, in some ghost-world overlaid with ours where the beauty that I have left my soul with still somehow exists and I—”

Celebrimbor’s voice rasped like a rustle of dry leaves, and Annatar pulled from him, concerned. His eyes were of mellow gold, and the shape of his pink lips parted as their fingers laced between their laps. The Maia watched him breathe deep the air, the transient scent of the bluebells as they bequeathed their vitality to their pale pollen and their dark seeds. Tyelpë seemed, despite his words, to be overcome with a hidden joy which flooded his features with a dolor of magnificent blissful contentment— nay! It was that elusive consciousness of present _happiness._

“I recall thinking to myself,” the elf continued, “Pondering how long it would be until I had no more of my soul to give, until I faded from the overwhelming stream of time to surrender entirely to that ghost-world.”

He turned to Annatar then, bringing upwards their clasped hands to kiss the back of the Maia’s palm. Those hands were not untouched by grief, but they transcended the small silver scars that marked his passage through time, making them the more skilled. Celebrimbor’s lips lingered there, delicately scattering his tenderness along the knuckles. A sense of calm overcame him along with a sense of peace which he hadn’t known achievable. His chuckle rolled its warm vibrations from his last kiss to the last knuckle.

“I scarce believe how lucky I am!” His breath was a susurration that swelled with a passion only just above a whisper. The Maia’s brow furrowed in wonderment as he continued, leaning in to hear the words which spilled from Tyelpë’s mouth as if to bathe in their strange marvelous joy.

“My grief was that whatever beauty that I made would be doomed, that those myriad lovely images in my head would wither before my eyes even as I withered. I thought, in my most profound despair, that one day, all of Eregion would be but a stony ruin on a grassy hillside, and only the tired earth would remember the hands that had built the weed-choked walls. Deep they delved us, high they built us, fair they wrought us: but they are gone.”

Tears twinkled along the corners of grey eyes, but the sound that came from Celebrimbor’s lips was of laughter, bright and clear and achingly exhilarated, as in a confession long in the making, as if in a hope for something nearly attainable, something unimaginably filled with joy. Annatar sat so near to him, so very bewildered yet overcome with a burgeoning happiness: though he knew not why.

“I did not intend to be so melancholy, please, forgive me!” Tyelpë exclaimed, and the bluebells bobbed in the air with an echo of his laughter as he pressed intensely their foreheads together, shifting in the seat to come even nearer to him, _so near to him._ Annatar’s eyes glittered like honey, and the elf cradled his jaw, rueing the disentangling of their fingers as he fumbled with his now-freed hand.

“What I want to say,” he said, remembering softness, “Is that you saved me from despair. You give me _hope,_ Anna, that some beauty can persevere through the long and weary years. You make me feel like I can fully treasure my life without leaving pieces of myself behind to that ghost-world. I could leave my soul with you and I would never fade.”

Tyelpë found what he was fumbling for, slipping his hand from the pocket of leather he had kept tight on his belt under the cloak that draped his shoulders. He held it tightly, folding his fingers over it so that it pressed against his palm. The bluebells murmured amongst themselves, and the Maia paused at his movement, at the sweetly minute tremor that fell upon them when a flash of a ring of plain silver shone from uncurling fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> "Deep they delved us, high they built us, fair they wrought us: but they are gone." This line was taken from the Fellowship of the Ring, in the chapter "The Ring Goes South." Treebeard's song was also an inspiration for this work: "And now all those lands lie under the wave / And the years lie thicker than the leaves."  
> Please look up the bluebell forests, they are so beautiful I would love to lie in one forever.  
> Loving nature which decays is so very painful. So we must love something unchanging: usually this is God. Sometimes I find it difficult because I do not believe in one such figure, but there is something peaceful about the transcendent beauty of the unconscious probability that governs our existence.  
> Sorry, I am rambling and have perhaps made this a little too personal. Tolkien never ceases to inspire within me such grand emotion.  
> ***


End file.
